Ulrika and Ernest are adventuring in the woods, but who are these two pople?
Ulrika is a battle hardened veteran, and Ernest instead is her disciple, that is less experienced but seems to be more magicall inclined than the woman. The young apprentice has no idea of the quest they are going to understake, and this is a disoovery that will make him and the player as they advance through an unknown hostile territory...

Final Quest: the disciple journey (or FQ:tdj, in short) is a two party - one sitting adventure (took me 40 minutes to complete, yeah, that's less than an hour and I didn't rush through it but i took my time and also did some extra combat encounters... just for fun!). This is a short linear dungeon delving adventure divided in various territories, each one ending with a boss fight, there are no puzzles (except maybe a part in which you need to find an item to unlock a door, but that's all), so it's apparently a classical and boring game... but yeah apparently!


The description says that Freeze becomes less effective as you use it... well in my experience it worked only once per enemy!

This idea may come from the fact that the game uses average music and lots of RTPs. The exception are the main characters that uses custom portraits that perfectly fit the style of the charsets (that are also edits, I guess!). Despite the use of the resources that you probaly already saw one thousand times, the maps are well made and organized, as I wrote before it is linear but still the places you will visit are more that narrow corridors and have a realistic appearance despite the semplicity of the idea.

On the other hand, combat is different from the usual: yes, there are the old classic random encounters (but you can flee easily) and the obligatory boss fights, but NO levels! Yes, the two protagonists do not earn experience points (or money!) but they just master their skills, and each one has a tree that can be used to specialize them. For example I made Ulrika my main attacker (or Dps), while I used Ernest as a healer, but he was also useful for his ability to freeze the enemies or poison them.

Characters may also equip bonuses for example to Attack, Defense or Agility, or some that produces different effects... for a price! Each character has three slots for these "modifiers" while weapons and armors are fixed and there are no shops to buy items. Anyway consumables can be found scattered around (look for blinking spots) or inside some chests, but do not worry because you won't probably need to collect them all, since the party is automatically restored after each combat encounters, and the consumables are also replenished! (but yes, ignore me, and collect all the consumables, you deserve them!).

As I mentioned before FQ:tdj is a linear game, but there was a part in which you need to fight a mini-boss to get two items to proceed. Oddly there are two mini-bosses and a total of four identical items, but you just need two, so I don't know if this was a mistake (maybe you should get just one item from each boss?) or done on purpose so you can choose your opponent (in my 40-45 minutes playthough I killed both of them anyway!). This was the only thing that I found odd, for the rest, this was a good entry, anyway time to read the final verdict.


But WHY? I wanna talk with someone else, this game has no dialogues with Npcs!


Final Verdict
FQ:tdj is a short story and a simple game with some distinct but not too original features. I did not tell much of the story because it's something that have to be experience, especially for the final twist after the final combat encounter. I liked that, and in this regard I will just tell you that this is a humorous fantasy adventure, not unlike some I recently reviewed. It's fun, but also collecting and mastering skills is fun, anyway it's not too difficult and you can probably breeze through it. It's possible to save anytime, anywhere, there is also a quickload option, a manual in the inventory that explains everything, and you can also switch run and walk just pressing a key! So yes, this is a polished and optimized short game that is also a pleasure to play due to the attention to the details.

Ok, it's not an overly original game, it's quite classic for some aspects but for others it distinguishes itself from the many dungeon delving fantasy adventures. And it's fun, that is always a good thing. 4/5!